The Labour party grassroots campaign group Momentum wants to study the Texas Senate race which saw the Democratic candidate come close to winning in a state where the Republicans were seen as so dominant that it was not worth a serious contest.

The early belief is that Labour’s ground operation could learn from Beto O’Rourke’s campaign against the incumbent Ted Cruz, which relied heavily on a year-long campaign in which the Democratic party recruited volunteers in areas previously considered unwinnable.

Jo Beardsmore, a Momentum member now living in the United States, said the O’Rourke campaign had come “so close in a state where the chances were so slim to begin with” partly by targeting previously neglected areas.

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Beardsmore was based in Austin, and praised the campaign for “knocking on every door; not ruling out any voter based on a belief how they would vote” and building up a volunteer organisation with 700 “pop-up offices” in the vast state.

While the Democratic campaign did not succeed, Beardsmore said he believed it had created activist networks that did not exist before – “we found progressives in communities that didn’t know each other, and now they are looking for battles to fight next”.

“For Labour, it shows we should be campaigning everywhere, and that we can succeed in seats like Battersea and Canterbury where we have done things like building up our ground game over a long time,” Beardsmore added.

Momentum, the Jeremy Corbyn-supporting Labour activist group, has been developing links with the new wave of Democrat campaigners, many of whom were initially active in Bernie Sanders unsuccessful campaign for the party’s nomination.

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It has called for US-style open selections in the UK, saying that without such a system Labour will never produce new candidates such as Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, the 29-year-old who won a house seat in New York.

Adam Klug and Emma Rees, two of Momentum’s founders, spent 10 weeks visiting the US and Canada earlier this year, comparing notes and delivering workshops on campaigning and organisation lessons learned from the UK. The two visited O’Rourke’s campaign at the primary stage in February.

Laura Parker, Momentum’s national coordinator, said that Momentum would invite members of the O’Rourke campaign team to the UK. “If Beto can come within three points of winning in deep red Texas, the field really is wide open for left candidates who harness the power of a mass movement,” she added.

Over the course of the campaign, O’Rourke activists knocked on over 2.8 million doors and made more than 20 million calls to voters, with the candidate himself visiting all 254 counties in Texas.